Fifteen Minutes
by Greer Shlivandas
Summary: More Naruto Yaoi- the Otonin prepare for what they know all too well will be the final curtain call.


Notes: This was originally written before Naruto #92 came out, and was almost scrapped as pointless- but in light of what happened I felt I had to resurrect it. Spoilers for up to #88, but it reads better if you've seen at least up to #92. This one is for my poor Otonin peeps, and for anyone else who ever loved 'em.

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FIFTEEN MINUTES

"Time flies, when you're having fun." -- trad.

"FIFTEEN MINUTES!" was what the orderly had barked at him when she let Dosu in the door, locking it shut behind him. He knew there were two masked guards propping up the walls out in the hallway, but at least they allowed him the illusion of privacy. Hell, there could have been rooms full of Leaf shinobi somewhere armed with headphones and video screens, obsessing over hidden meanings in his every twitch or breath, for all the good it would do them. Dosu wasn't here on Orochimaru's business anymore. 

Zaku had been given a private room, gray expanses of too much empty space on either side of his bed telling of others hastily moved out. Chains strung from the ceiling held his partly-reconstructed right arm in traction, and the left had been cemented in a plaster cast from palm to neck, fingernails indigo with bruises protruding out the end. His jacket and shirt had had to be cut away for surgery; but someone- either uncommonly kind or merely used to dealing with the hysterics of bedridden ninjas- had helped him out of his hospital robe and back into his pants, dirt-smudged from the Forrest as they were. His eyes were closed, but the pulse jumping in his throat beat far too rapidly for sleep. 

The room had a single chair over by the window, so Dosu sat and waited. His teammate made no move to acknowledge his presence, but lay rigid on the bed like a poorly made-up corpse for a good five minutes before he spoke. 

"We're fucked, aren't we?" 

There was no good answer to that one. "Yes. Probably." The other boy bed fell silent again, considering. 

"Where did _he_ go?" They both knew exactly who Zaku meant. 

"He disappeared right after your match started. He probably went to see what they were doing with Uchiha. He doesn't need us anymore, in any case." 

"You can say that again," Zaku grunted, eyes open but fixed on the ceiling fixtures above him. "And Kin? What about her?" 

"She's three doors down, on the other side of the hall. She lost. Kid with that shadow jutsu made her crack her own skull open against a wall. She's got a nasty concussion."

"Huh. You won though, didn't ya?" There was an unexpected snap to his voice, like the sound a stick makes when bent beyond the breaking point. 

"Heh- I wouldn't be here if I hadn't. I was up against that fat guy from the Forrest. Seems he thought I couldn't get him if he covered his ears." 

"Dumbass. But that's great for you, man. That's…just great." Zaku's cheeks flared suddenly, his words getting squeezed into mangled parodies of themselves by a throat clenching tight around some twisted, unknowable emotion. "It's good to know at least _one_ of us doesn't suck as badly as _he_ assumed we were going to..." 

"Where are you pulling that out of? We're not _that_ bad. Only two teams had one more than one person pass, and one of those is that bunch of freaks from Sand. And _you_ tried to fight with two busted arms, ya idiot." Whistling in the dark, and Dosu knew it, but maybe Zaku would pick up the tune for awhile... 

"Yeah we are. Of _course _we are. Dammit!" Zaku gasped in pain as he tried to roll over and hide the disgrace of tears, only to find himself brought up short by his injuries. Dosu politely looked away, focusing instead on a trio of crows eating garbage on a neighboring rooftop while he waited for his teammate's broken sniffling to calm. 

"D'ya.. d'ya know where I come from, Dosu?" Zaku whispered to the empty room. 

"You were born in Hidden Marsh, weren't you?" He knew that much, although Zaku had never wanted to talk about his past before. 

"Ya wanna know what my family did there? We weren't ninjas. We were weavers. We raised silkworms. You can't even _be_ a ninja in Marsh unless you're born into a special bloodline. My father would get commissions from ministers, daimyos, hell- the Kazekage once, even! But to the shinobi in Marsh we were still shit. Peasants. Water-bloods." Zaku turned his face into his shoulder where his friend couldn't see it, body strung tight with shame. "When Orochimaru came, I thought- 'here's my chance.' Finally, a way out. That I wasn't going to grow up to live like my father, nodding and smiling as the shinobi scrapped the _shit_ off their boots onto his back..." 

Zaku shuddered convulsively as pain from the fists he had just tried to clench must have lanced through his shoulders. " Well, guess what? The docs are saying that they may not be able to fix me up enough to even hold a kunai right, forget about forming a seal. Can't live as a ninja if you can't use your hands, right? Right."

"You might not have to." Dosu grimaced, knowing that just by voicing the possibility he was probably calling it into being. "They're just as likely to turn us over to that monster Morino whenever they find out about _him_."

"You're serious?" Zaku opened his eyes at that and turned a face the color of old cheese towards his teammate, pupils grown egg-sized with panic.

Dosu nodded once, and shuffled uncomfortably under his cape as Zaku flopped bonelessly back down onto the bed. It was too humid down here in the Leaf village, and his usual layers of fur and cloth had grown greasy with sweat. The other Sound ninja was quiet now, perhaps consoled by the prospect of death through torture over having to return home to his parents in disgrace. Dosu himself knew little about the dually attracting and repelling magnetism of family, having lived on his own for as long as he could remember. 

"What are you gonna do now?" Zaku asked after another minute had gone by.

"Whatever I have to. The plan's blown, _**he**_ hasn't been telling us anything about anything, you guys are down and out of it for awhile...I might as well try and make chuunin. And if Sasuke gets damaged in the process, then just maybe- _maybe_- we'll get a little of our own back." A plan was growing in his mind, a plan he dared not tell Zaku about just yet, in case it didn't succeed. But if it did...

He jumped when the butt of someone's kunai rapped impatiently on the door. "THREE MINUTES!" 

"I have to go. They're going to kick me out." Dosu pushed up out of his chair and gathered his cloak around him, nodding goodbye to the other boy, who lay staring at the ceiling. "I'll tell Kin that I saw you." He had one hand raised to knock and tell the guards he was done, when Zaku called after him.

"Wait! Kinuta... please...."

It was the first time Zaku had ever called him by his first name. Two years as a team together, witness to the worst each other could be, forced to share beds and latrines in the uncomfortable intimacy of camp life, lovers when the mood took them, and still neither had ever dared so much. Behind him, he heard rustling and a flicker of muttered swearing that told him Zaku was unsuccessfully trying to sit up.

"What is it?" he asked carefully, turning back to face the other boy.

"C'mere." Zaku pulled his lips back into an embarrassed grimace that a week ago might have been a come-hither smile. He raised his shoulders unthinkingly as if to try and hold his arms out, grunting in pain as the casts held them down. 

Dosu sat beside him on the bed, holding the tips of his teammate's fingers in his own, all of his hands that were exposed by the bandages. His skin was clammy and chilled- those plaster monstrosities were probably cutting down on the circulation. "Abumi?" he asked.

"Stay with me awhile- you got another minute at least. Please?" 

They had never been much for casual physical affection. After all, what was a kiss or a hug compared to your friend throwing himself in front of a brace of shuriken to save your butt? You didn't need to come home and prove to someone you loved them with flowers or poetry when you spent all damn day long doing it by risking your own neck. Still, he stretched out in the narrow space beside Zaku, laying his head down on his friend's shoulder, the other Otonin wrapping his legs around him in lieu of the arms he couldn't. His teammate's breath fluttered hollowly out from beneath Dosu's cheek in a sigh as Zaku craned his neck around to press a few awkward kisses against Dosu's eyebrow and forehead.

"I can't reach you like this," he complained, trying to shuffle the other boy upward with his feet. "C'mon, man- give me a hand here! Dammit, I did _not_ just say that..." Zaku started laughing then, painful heaves of hilarity that sounded suspiciously like crying. A kinder man might have tried to soothe him by telling him everything was going to be alright, but Dosu hadn't survived as long as he had by staking value on empty promises. So instead he pulled aside the bandages covering the lower half of his face, knowing full well how hideous the scarring they hid must seem, and laid the ruined remnants of his lips against his friend's. However bad he looked, it couldn't be as bad as Zaku must feel. His teammate kissed him clumsily, unable to turn his head fully in that position, technique blown aside by the need for simple human contact. It felt wrong not to have Zaku's strong arms squeezing him, or his eager friendly hardness nudging at Dosu's thigh, but this was neither the time nor the place. The thought that there might not _be_ another time or place brought Dosu's hand up to his friend's hair, stroking the uncombed mass of it, all sweaty and matted from lying in bed. This was the price they paid: for naivety, for stupidity, for lack of strength or skill, for failure to value self-preservation over their own personal glory. For their unspoken mutual betrayal as they risked everything to become stronger, instead of thinking of how the other would feel if they died in the process. They say everyone gets their fifteen minutes, and it went without saying that theirs was almost used up.

A kiss bled dry of innocence, and two friends sharing what little comfort they could was what the orderly found when she came in to tap on Dosu's shoulder and jerk her thumb at the door. "Out!" she barked, adding a little more civilly, "He needs to sleep if those are going to heal."

Time waits for none, and there was nothing else for it. Dosu slipped off the bed, though he would have rather slipped a kunai into her throat. "I'll catch up with you whenever I can... Abumi." Zaku smiled, a spark of what might have been pride shimmering in his tired eyes. The tips of his fingers curled around Dosu's, one more time.

"Give 'em hell for me, Kinuta. You better give 'em hell."


End file.
